In the field of optical networking, telecommunications, optical applications and photonics it is highly desirable to continually enhance device performance and reduce fabrication, packaging and assembly costs. Accordingly, multi-functional photonic components or photonic components exhibiting enhanced functionality are highly desirable.
Super-grating distributed Bragg reflector tunable lasers and sampled/chirped grating distributed Bragg reflector tunable lasers both usually require special fabrication techniques to make the distributed Bragg reflector gratings and usually require tuning through carrier injection. Current and temperature tuned distributed Bragg reflector tunable lasers and current and temperature tuned fixed distributed feedback/distributed Bragg reflector lasers usually have very small tuning ranges and difficult are to maintain.
Therefore, the need exists to have a monolithic tunable laser providing a larger tunable range and standard fabrication techniques.